EAGER: Fabrication of Thin, Lens-Free Cameras for Visible and SWIR Imaging

EAGER：制造用于可见光和短波红外成像的薄型无镜头相机

• 批准号: 1502875
• 负责人: Ashok Veeraraghavan
• 金额: $ 15万
• 依托单位: William Marsh Rice University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-02-01 至 2017-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1502875&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Fabrication; Thin; Lens; Free

Image sensors have benefited immensely from the steady advances in semiconductor fabrication, resulting in an order of magnitude resolution increase every decade for the last three decades. Moore?s law has had a similar impact on both computing and image sensor technology. In addition to the sensor, however, cameras and other imaging devices require lenses whose manufacturing processes has not benefited from Moore?s law. As a result the ultimate scaling and cost of imaging devices is limited by physical optics. This research project involves the development of Lens-Free Cameras (LFCs), a novel imaging architecture for visible, short-wave infrared (SWIR), mid-wave infrared (MWIR) and thermal wavelengths that exploits amplitude multiplexing masks and computational demultiplexing algorithms to replace lenses in traditional cameras. Such lensless imaging technology will produce thin cameras that can be directly fabricated using contemporary semiconductor fabrication processes, thereby benefitting from the scaling laws of semiconductor fabrication.An LFC consists of an image sensor and a thin amplitude modulation mask fabricated at a few hundreds of microns above the image sensor surface. The amplitude modulation mask creates a linear mapping between the scene and the sensor measurements. The linear system describing the LFC contains millions of variables and millions of measurements. Solving this large linear system of equations will allow for the reconstruction of high resolution images from the sensor measurements. This project will focus on the fabrication of a thin lensfree camera. The result of this fabrication process will be the world?s first camera less than a millimeter thick. The advance in lensfree cameras will be more widely applicable to several challenging applications such as microscopy, endoscopy and other space constrained imaging scenarios.

图像传感器从半导体制造的稳步发展中受益匪浅，在过去的三十年中，每十年就有一个数量级的分辨率增加。摩尔?S定律对计算和图像传感器技术都产生了类似的影响。然而，除了传感器之外，相机和其他成像设备也需要镜头，而这些镜头的制造工艺并没有从摩尔？年代法律。因此，成像器件的最终规模和成本受到物理光学的限制。该研究项目涉及无镜头相机（lfc）的开发，这是一种用于可见光、短波红外（SWIR）、中波红外（MWIR）和热波长的新型成像架构，利用幅度复用掩模和计算解复用算法来取代传统相机中的镜头。这种无透镜成像技术将生产薄相机，可以直接使用现代半导体制造工艺制造，从而受益于半导体制造的缩放定律。LFC由图像传感器和在图像传感器表面上方几百微米处制作的薄调幅掩模组成。调幅掩模在场景和传感器测量之间创建线性映射。描述LFC的线性系统包含数百万个变量和数百万个测量值。求解这个大型线性方程组将允许从传感器测量中重建高分辨率图像。这个项目将专注于制造一个薄的无镜头相机。这个制造过程的结果将是世界？这是美国首款厚度不到一毫米的相机。无镜头相机的进步将更广泛地适用于一些具有挑战性的应用，如显微镜、内窥镜检查和其他空间受限的成像场景。